Evolution of the Catalogue of Life Architecture

The Species 2000 and ITIS Catalogue of Life aims to create and deliver a catalogue of all known species, using a distributed set of data sources. The current Species 2000 software has developed over a number of years, and the system requirements have evolved substantially over the same period. In this paper we discuss the current Catalogue of Life software, the way the requirements are evolving, and major elements of a planned new architectural design being developed as part of the 4D4Life EU e-Infrastructure project. Of particular importance in the new design is to be able to maintain the catalogue, dealing with potential overlaps between supplier databases; to keep it up to date and manage revisions that arise out of changes of scientific opinion; to be able to map between different taxonomies within and outside the catalogue; to be able to provide a wider range of services to other electronic systems which need the catalogue as their "taxonomic backbone"; and to support third-party applications by means of an open platform architecture.

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